Stephen Mangan, Heather Graham & Jo Hartley To Star In Sky Atlantic Comedy ‘BLISS’
After a recent detour into slightly odd world of the (now defunct) Houdini & Doyle, Stephen Mangan is heading back to comedy with BLISS on Sky Atlantic, along with Hollywood star Heather Graham and This Is England’s Jo Hartley.
The show is written and directed by the brilliant Emmy Award-winning US writer, director and performer David Cross (Arrested Development, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret), and is a co-production between Merman (Catastrophe, Divorce, Todd Margaret) and Big Talk Productions (Cold Feet, Mum) in association with David Cross’s Liberal Jew-Run Media Productions for Sky Atlantic.
BLISS follows the complicated double life of Andrew (Mangan), a successful travel writer who, through extenuating circumstances, finds himself living between two sets of wives and children whose existences are unknown to each other. Andrew, in a constant state of moral crisis, must find a way to balance his time and energies between his wife Kim (Heather Graham) and teenage daughter, while travelling back and forth across Bristol to his other family, wife Denise (Jo Hartley) and their teenage son. As Andrew’s two worlds become ever harder to contain, so does his sanity. And he finds himself going to increasingly drastic lengths to protect the two families he loves.
Stephen Mangan is of course well known to British audiences for Green Wing, and the wonderful Episodes. Heather Graham you will know from movies such as The Hangover, Austin Powers, and Boogie Nights, although she has popped up on TV before in Scrubs, Californication, and most recently Angie Tribeca. Jo Hartley is probably best know for her work on the This Is England series, but also has appeared in The Mimic, Not Safe for Work and the Eddie the Eagle movie.
Mangan said of the project “I’ve always wanted two wives so this project is very close to my heart. And I get to work with the super-talent that is David Cross. I can’t wait.” Cross added “This project is unlike anything I’ve ever done before, in so far as I’ve never been to Bristol. Is it nice? Heard good things. Oh also there’s a scene that takes place in Weston-super-Mare, so there’s that.”
Filming on BLISS is scheduled to start in late November 2016 in London and Bristol, and the show will air in 2017.
